Trauma for the Kid

The last week of my sabbatical, the Saturday before I returned to work, I had my car stolen. A great end to my time off, don’t you think? I didn’t say anything to anyone at work because I wanted my return to be about my time off and what a great time I had. I didn’t want to spend my time talking about my missing car.

I loved that car. It was a 1991 Mustang Convertible. I bought this car new and keep it for fourteen years. There were a couple of times I started looking at new cars but I never found anything I liked as much as this one, so I kept it.

Two years ago I had it repainted, a new top, and a new interior done and my baby looked new. I had people stopping me and asking about the car, so that made it even harder to think about training for a new one. Besides the cost of making all the cosmetic changes was at least a third of the down payment on a new car.

While I was in the UK I left the car at the Ford dealership and they did some major work that was really needed. New clutch, new motors for the power windows, fixed the air conditioning and last but not least, put in new door locks. Catch the irony here?

After I left the dealership I went to Best Buy and had a new radio installed along with a XM receiver. I was styling. I was happy. I was living on borrowed time.

The bottom line is that I had just spent more money on the car than insurance would pay to replace it. The final insult was I had already made arrangements for a new alarm system to be installed. It was taken on the Labor Day Saturday and I already had an appointment for the following Saturday to have the new alarm installed.

Well the good news is that the car has been recovered. It was found abandoned in a down town garage. The radio and the XM was missing and the lock on the steering wheel had been popped, all that is there now is nothing, a big gaping hole. But it appears that the insurance company will cover the damage. It’s in the garage now and they are looking it over and then will perform surgery. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

The universe must be trying to teach me lesson, but I’m not sure just what that lesson is. Maybe it was a way to tell me that as much fun as I had had for the last two months that fun was well behind me now. It could be a test from the universe to see if I can keep what I have learned in Oxford fresh and relevant. I am sure that a secondary part of the test was to see if I could keep my humor about a wretched tragedy.

I really think the fundamental caution here is very simple. Make very sure to pay next month’s insurance premium